Selling is Service: How to Motivate your Team to Upsell

Selling is Service: How to Motivate your Team to Upsell

12th Mar 2019

With the vast array of products, services and experiences on offer at Visitor Attractions, it can be a difficult task for visitors to make the right choices. We want visitors to understand what is on offer and choose the right experiences based on what is most suited to them. Some of these experiences may come at an additional cost. Whether £50 for high tea at a palace or £2 for lorikeet feed at a zoo, these added extras are often some of the most memorable highlights. This can only happen if staff help guide visitors through their experience, presenting the right opportunities to them at the right times. In these situations staff informing about and upselling the right products is part of delivering a good visitor experience. Ultimately we want our visitors going away having had a better experience than they expected, having spent more money than they intended and feeling great about it. Simply put - Selling is Service.

National Gallery - Visitor donations have increased by more than 300%

The key to motivating your team to upsell is to create a culture where staff understand that they are not only upselling for the benefit of the business, but also for the benefit of the visitors and themselves too. Then you must help your team by giving them intelligent practices and processes. Do this and you will see an increase in upselling. The following three processes will help you on the journey:

Map your visitor journey and find your ‘Moments of Truth’

A useful exercise is to get your team to map your visitor journey. Facilitate them to collaboratively discuss and draw out the various touchpoints of your organisation. From the very first visitor interaction, probably your website, through the variety of attractions, facilities and amenities you have, right up to the moment the visitor’s journey with you is finished and you say goodbye. Then get your team to review the map they have created and decided what the most important parts of the visitor experience are - the ‘Moments of Truth.’ You can then discuss what needs to happen at each of these moment to make sure it is a success, whilst considering the different needs of your different visitors. Some of the ‘Moments of Truth’ will involve upselling, these can then be discussed and strategised for specific visitors at specific times. Through doing this you are ensuring that your team understand when, where and with whom they should be capitalising on the opportunity to upsell.

Blenheim Palace - mapping their customer journey to find their ‘Moments of Truth’

Consider your visitors ‘Moods, Expectations and Wants’

Helping your team to understand what your visitors are thinking, feeling and expecting, will help them to understand what they might be wanting at any given moment – and why. If you empower your team to be able to do this, they will then be able to upsell the right products to the right visitors at the right times. The key is treating each visitor with personal attention and reacting to their wants in a personal way. To do this you must get your team to prepare and practice. Get them to consider the different types of visitor you have i.e. families, couples etc then visualise them in your business. For each visitor type discuss, agree and write down their general ‘Moods, Expectations and Wants.’ With this information your team can prepare to do interesting things like plan how to approach the visitors, choose a relevant product to upsell to them and be ready to deliver that experience so that it becomes habit.

Kew Gardens - onsite membership sales have increased by more than 50%

Have clearly defined and communicated ‘Key Performance Indicators’

It is vital to have realistic but aspirational targets and communicate regularly with your team on how they are performing. They should understand what success looks like and what the benefit to them of achieving it is. If they are not connected to the results and don’t understand if it’s been a good day/week/month/year then it will seem unimportant. Being regularly updated through team briefings and having tangible incentives, will motivate your team and create a positive culture of upselling. In terms of incentives, financial reward should be considered but is not the only option; reward through recognition and praise can be equally effective.

Bala McAlinn is a director at the award winning production house and staffing agency Boo Productions www.booproductions.com. Boo work with many leading Visitor Attractions including having a permanent staffing contract with the National Gallery in London. He is also co-founder of Ruff Trade Training, a training company that transforms business by transforming people www.rufftradetraining.com.